The Perfect Salesman?

We have never had a dedicated salesperson for our business – we haven’t really looked for one – but recently the perfect salesman walked into our studio. He’s sounded so good we had to share his story, because he’s available to work for your business too if you want. If you can handle the qualified leads and subsequent business he promises to bring?

He introduced himself; “Hi, I’m Ad, I can be your perfect salesman“. Bit cocky. But we’ll let him gave us his elevator pitch:

“I’m happy to work on a commission-only basis, after a tiny retainer salary – just £55 a month will cover me. If I make no sale, you pay me nothing more than that.” OK, he had us interested at his costs.

“I’ll work completely flexible hours for you. Whenever you want or need me, I can work. Outside of normal working hours is not a problem, if that’s what you’re business needs – I can do 24/7.”

“I will never have a day off through illness, or holiday. I won’t stop working unless you want me to. As long as you’re happy I’ll work. If you change your mind, you can sack me with immediate and instant notice and effect. No problem. If you never want me to work for you again, I promise no fuss, no obligation, and no hassle. If you do, i’ll hold no grudges and carry on where i left off.”

He was sounding good – if not a little sure of himself. We were waiting for the catch, there had to be a catch. He continued;

“Just take time to give me the information on your business, and unlike other sales people I promise to always be completely ‘on-message’. Exactly how you want me to represent your business, every time. I can pay extra attention to people that know your business already and have visited your website previously for example.”

“What I’m especially good at, is picking out new people who were looking for exactly the products and services you provide, in the geographical area you want to provide it.”

“I’m constantly innovating – finding new ways to reach your target audience without resorting to any bad practices.” His past experience certainly showed this was the case, he’s worked for massive companies and one man band businesses with great effect. “So what sales messages will you deliver?”

“I can test sales-pitches for you and provide feedback on which messages were working best, and use these going forward. I can tell you exactly what to promote, or we could just point him in the directions of pages on our website – even specific product listings – and I’ll learn all your products, and pick out all the details myself, no problem.”

“I’ll direct people who are looking for your services straight to you and let you pick it up from there. Either through to a relevant landing page on our website, or if they pick up the phone and called you direct. Don’t worry, if you’re thinking how will I know, I’ll monitor how the traffic that filters through your sales funnel and highlight any problems.”

“If I need to earn your trust and show you a few results, you can dip your toe in the water with a trickle. If I’m doing my job right, and you can handle the flow – open the taps and prepare for a deluge!”

“If I can see you have a well optimised website by the way, you’ll pay less than when I’ve done the same work for your competitors. You get rewarded for giving people a great user experience. If your website talks well to the traffic i’m sending there, we’ll both win – you’ll convert more into business, I’ll get you more business for less money.”

“I can target any geographical area for you too – if you want to just target customers within a certain proximity of your address, or any given location, or nationwide, or even overseas. No problem. (I won’t charge you any extra travel expenses.)”

“I send you report each month end, but you can check whenever you want to see them, I’ll update with stats each day. I’ll work hard to keep to only the budget you want to give me, and no more. I’ll try and get you the cheapest acquisition cost. That’s what give me my kicks.” He assured us he’d be completely transparent; he was confident we’d be happy – that he would more than pay for himself and our only driver would be how much business we could handle?!

“I’ve worked for a massive list of companies, large and small, big businesses pay me thousands of pounds a day because they can see i earn my money.” Sure enough, a large list of people had given glowing references for his services.

“My main goal is to earn you a return on investment. I want to prove that I generate more in sales than it costs to keep me on. Tell me your sales costs, and your objectives for my work, and I’ll work to those parameters and report on them.”

We were interested. How could we not be? It was a convincing case. What was not to like?

With his fixed costs so low (from £55 a month), and the rest only based on guaranteed leads provided, compared to having a normal salesperson’s salary on our books, this guy would be feeding us a serious amount of leads for that money.

Well, we had to like the way he worked and by the end of the interview we were getting on really well. But, we didn’t know any more about our new sales person friend than he referred to himself as “Ad”.

“Sorry ‘Ad’, I didn’t catch your surname, and where were you from? Who do you work for?”

“Oh sorry, yes.The name is Words. Ad Words. I work for Google, you may have heard of them? I’d love to get to work for your company.”

So that was it. We were sold. Whilst this perfect salesman blog post of how “Ad Words” can work for your business is a big dose of cheesy, we hope it has demonstrated how he, sorry it, can work for you. Seen more as a salesman, directing in red-hot leads, than marketing in the same way that flyers are, it’s a compelling case. What salary would a salesman of that calibre require? And how many calls or leads in could they generate?